There are many contexts under which cross-cultural communication takes place. For example, when a person travels abroad, there is obviously a need for some cross-cultural communication. Immigration today is quite commonplace and provides another context for cross-cultural communication. Naturally, business provides yet a further context for cross-cultural communication.
With regard the business context, in order to remain competitive, businesses today are forced to operate globally. This phenomenon is known as globalization. As a result of globalization, it is not uncommon for a business to have say a sales and marketing operation in one country, an engineering and development team in a second country, and a manufacturing team in a third country. Obviously globalization leads to fragmentation of a business. However, such fragmentation is justified by cheaper labor costs, low tax rates, government incentives, access to skilled labor, etc. However, globalization is being impeded by the language barrier inherent in cross-cultural communication as often the diverse teams that make up a global business each speak a different language.